France: Paris terror attacks, from compassion to reality
Shortly after the terrorist attacks that struck Paris during the evening of November 13, 2015, Fr. Federico Lombardi, spokesman for the Holy See, condemned this “new manifestation of insane terrorist violence and hatred.” “In the Vatican, we are following the terrible news coming from Paris,” he said in a statement released in the middle of the night. “We are faced with an attack on the peace of all humanity, one that requires a decisive and united reaction from everyone to oppose the spread of murderous hatred under all its forms.”
In a statement published a few hours after these bloody attacks, Bishop Georges Pontier, president of the French Bishops’ Conference, condemned them as being “of unparalleled barbarity. Together with the Catholics of France, I express my profound sorrow at this extreme violence that has taken the lives of so many and wounded so many others. My thoughts and prayers are with the victims, those dear to them, the police and the military, the medical responders, and those who govern us, on whom weighs a heavy responsibility. In such difficult times it is on them that we rely.”
On Sunday, November 15, during the Angelus in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis expressed his profound sorrow and restated that “the pathway of violence and hatred” will not solve humanity’s problems. “The name of God cannot be used to justify such actions; that is blasphemy!” he exclaimed. “Such barbarity leaves us aghast and makes us wonder how the heart of man can conceive and carry out such horrible things—that have shaken not only France but also the entire world.”
More realistically, Fr. Christian Bouchacourt, SSPX District Superior of France, issued a statement on November 16th, saying that “such an attack requires without any doubt an immediate response from French public authorities in politics, the police and the military. But will this suffice to reestablish long-term order, peace and safety in France? We affirm the contrary. Indeed, Pope Pius XI in his beautiful encyclical Quas primas on Christ the King saw the clouds gathering over the world in the early 20th century and proclaimed, ‘…these manifold evils in the world were due to the fact that the majority of men had thrust Jesus Christ and His holy law out of their lives; that these had no place either in private affairs or in politics: and we said further, that as long as individuals and states refused to submit to the rule of Our Savior, there would be no really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace among nations.’
“Only Christ, the Prince of peace, is able to restore the reign of justice, love and peace to the heart of human society, broken as it is by sin and by the rejection, both public and private, of the Law of God. This is why we must work each day to establish “the peace of Christ through the reign of Christ,” that is to say the fruitful union of Faith and Fatherland, of Church and State. These tragic events are the dramatic consequence of the divorce that tore apart France and the Church over 200 years ago, and which has led our leaders to reject Christ from society and to allow our country to slide into a slow apostasy.”
In Aleppo, Syria, Bishop George Abou Khazen, Apostolic Vicar of Latin Catholics, condemned the so-called “Islamic State”, who laid claim to these bloody attacks, pointing out that its fighters “are financed, armed and trained by major political powers for purely economic and political reasons.” In an interview with Vatican news agency Fides, he reminded Westerners that in Syria, “for years now, we have been undergoing massacres and living in terror.” This is why, he says, “unity of action is paramount; we must stop financing, arming and training terrorist groups who operate in the Middle East and now in Europe is well… We express our sympathy and our solidarity with the victims of the Paris massacre and with all of Europe. Terrorism is an ideology that spares no one. The Syrian people are well able to understand the painful situation in which European citizens find themselves today.”
On October 29th, in an interview with news agency Apic, Fr. Samir Khalil Samir, S.J. (in the picture) stated forcefully, “When Daesh, the Islamic State, burns Jordanian pilot Muadh al Jasasbeh, shot down near Raqqa in Syria, to death locked in a cage, or beheads 21 Coptic Christians in Libya, no one can say that this has nothing to do with Islam, claiming that Islam means peace and non-violence. It’s a lie!”
In fact, Fr. Samir Khalil Samir is a professor of Islamic studies and a specialist in Arabic, and he points out that violence is omnipresent in Islam, in the Koran itself and in khabar or hadith, which contain the traditions relating to the actions and words of Mohammed and his companions. “Everything that they could want can be found in tradition, and they can take what suits them depending on the circumstances. Everything the extremists do has its justification in a surah of the Koran, in khabar or in hadith. They have only to choose a passage to justify such and such an action. Each group of jihadis has its own mufti, who issues fatwas, religious decrees founded on the holy writings.” To justify the extermination of kafirs, the unbelievers or infidels, there is no lack among the founding texts of Islam. Violence is present in many of the surahs of the Koran, for instance Surah 5, 33–37: “The reward of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger […] is only this that they be slain or crucified; their hands and their feet shall be cut off on alternate sides; they shall be expelled from the land.”
In Syria and in Iraq, according to Fr. Samir Khalil Samir, the Ba’ath parties (Party of the Socialist and Arab Resurrection, founded by Michael Aflak, a Syrian Orthodox Christian) in power with their socialist, pan-Arabic and secular ideology had limited these Islamist movements. Now the terrorists of Daesh, ISIS, who receive financial and political support from the monarchies of the Gulf and from Turkey, would establish a Sunni caliphate in the region. “If the money is mostly coming from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, then the armaments are mostly coming from the West, because they are not manufactured in Arabic countries!” These Islamist movements aim to depose President Bashar al-Assad, especially because he is an Alawite, a branch of the Shiites, a minority group in Syria.
“Even if they were dictatorships, Ba’ath governments in Syria as in Iraq were neutral towards religion. Christians, if they did not get involved with politics, could live in peace and practice their religion. This is not the case under the jihadists, who leave Christians only this “choice”: pay the jizya, a per capita tax for non-Muslims, convert to Islam, or leave! Otherwise, they must die…” Christians, who were only a few years ago 9% of the population in Syria and 2% in Iraq, are leaving en masse.
“For now, the Russians are giving hope; they seem much more effective than the West at putting the terrorists to flight, whether they belong to Daesh or al-Nosra, the local branch of al Qaeda. All these jihadists, the majority of whom are foreigners, are “moderate” in nothing. On the ground, there are no “moderate rebels,” as certain Western governments would have us believe!”
(Sources: kipa-apic.ch–iMedia–CEF–LPL–Fides–DICI no. 325, 11-20-2015)
